Yorkshire against the Rest could be our State of Origin

The Queensland team celebrate their State of Origin victory over New South Wales in 2001. Previous attempts to launch a British version of the competition involving Yorkshire and Lancashire have foundered. Photograph: Darren England/Allsport

This week's first State of Origin clash in Sydney was another of those all too familiar occasions when followers of British rugby league are left to look on in envy. We don't have any fixture with remotely the intensity, on and off the field, of the annual three-match series between Queensland and New South Wales. But the most disappointing thing is that for the last seven years, we've not even tried to create one.

The last attempt to revive the most obvious British equivalent of Australia's ferocious inter-state rivalry – a Roses battle between Lancashire and Yorkshire – was abandoned in 2003. The decision to scrap what had been a three-year experiment was partly understandable, after a young, hungry Yorkshire team exposed the lack of motivation of a theoretically higher-calibre Lancashire line-up in a 56-6 drubbing at Odsal.

That was uncannily similar to the result that led to the last interruption in league's Roses rivalry, a 56-12 win for Yorkshire at Wigan in 1989. That was the fourth consecutive victory for the White Rose, whose players always seemed so much more committed to the concept than their Lancastrian equivalents – partly because of the fierce pride their coach, Peter Fox, took in ensuring the superiority of his county.

Again, Lancashire's lack of motivation was partly understandable. As someone who was born in Cheshire and now lives in Manchester, I hope I won't cause offence by suggesting that Lancashire lacks the same identity as that strange land over the Pennines. I remember Stuart Hall revealing with relish during the Look North sports results one Sunday afternoon in the dim and distant past that there was only one professional rugby league club in Lancashire – Blackpool Borough.

I think that's changed now, with Leigh and perhaps Wigan sneaking back across the boundary from Greater Manchester, and I know that many citizens of Warrington, Widnes and St Helens would still regard themselves as Lancastrians, even if the last line on their postal addresses is now Cheshire or Merseyside. But it still highlights one of the problems in coming up with a British rugby league rivalry to match that between Queensland and New South Wales.

The other big problem with reviving the Roses fixture is a welcome one – rugby league has already expanded sufficiently to make it slightly anachronistic, if the game is to serve its main purpose of acting as an unofficial England trial. Any list of contenders for places in this autumn's Four Nations squad would include a couple of Cumbrians – Ben Harrison and Shaun Lunt – plus the Harlequins prop Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook with his East End boiled onions accent. Huddersfield's Oxford-born prop Darrell Griffin could also be a contender, there are other young Cumbrians on the way through like Lee Mossop and James Donaldson, and the success of the Summer Conference competition means that Super League clubs are able to look further afield for talent, with Leeds's Bristol-born Michael Coady one early example of that.

And that's without mentioning the raft of young players coming through in Wales thanks to the development of the Crusaders and now the Scorpions in Championship One.

There is one obvious solution to this problem, which would recognise Yorkshire's dominance of previous Roses contests, and importance to British rugby league – as well as feeding into the Tykes' Queensland-esque us-against-the-world mentality, and their corresponding unpopularity with everybody else. The next Origin match should be Yorkshire versus the Rest of Britain.

There would be obvious problems in what you would call the Rest team – for the sake of simplicity I am still going to call them Lancashire – and how you would motivate them, which I'd throw open to the bright minds of the Guardian blog. But if you want to see the potential of such a contest, have a think about the selection issues and individual battles it would throw up, with a couple of possible team line-ups below.

Kevin Sinfield representing his Oldham roots against Leeds team-mates Jamie Peacock, Danny McGuire and Ryan Bailey. James Graham, who I'd pick as Lancashire captain ahead of Wigan's Sean O'Loughlin, teaming up with Adrian Morley to have a crack at Peacock, Bailey and Nick Scruton in the front row.

Yorkshire would have tough decisions to make at centre, where I suspect Keith Senior would love the chance to represent his county but may be squeezed out by the young thrusters Michael Shenton and Ryan Atkins. That would mean Atkins and Ben Westwood, who would be an automatic Yorkshire selection, taking on their Wolves team-mates Morley and Richie Myler.

With Rob Burrow injured and Matt Diskin and Danny Brough out of form, Yorkshire are surprisingly short of hookers and half-backs, while with Kallum Watkins injured and Shaun Briscoe struggling, Lancashire's problems are in the outside backs.

The fixture would carry all sorts of other intriguing possibilities. Yorkshire would be spoilt for choice when it comes to selecting their coach, with John Kear, Brian McDermott and Brian Noble all springing to mind. But there is not a single Lancastrian head coach in the Super League, which may force the selectors to go cap in hand to Tony Smith in the hills above Huddersfield, and perhaps team him up with a couple of younger men such as Keiron Cunningham, Paul Sculthorpe and Sean Long.

I'm so enthusiastic about it that I'd like to see it played this season, on Tuesday 6 July – the night before the last game of the State of Origin series – either at Headingley, or even Halifax's redeveloped Shay. Impossible? Probably, but there's nothing wrong with striking when the iron's hot.